Trait pour trait: Portrait of the Museum | Construction of Exhibitions

Curator: Aya Lurie

Sep. 16, 2017 - Feb. 3, 2018

The word portrait, common in numerous languages, comes from the Old French portret, a noun use of the past participle of portraire, which means “to paint, depict,” and is derived from the phrase trait pour trait – that is, portraiture line for line, feature for feature. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) tells the story of a Corinthian girl, the daughter of Boutades, who, when her loved one was leaving the country, traced the outline of the shadow of his face cast on the wall by a candle. This story is one of the key myths of the birth of portraiture in general and of painting in particular. The philosopher and art scholar Hubert Damisch points out that “.. . [T]he shadow’s outlining .. . implies .. . the same connection, point by point, trait pour trait, between the contour of the object and that of its cast shadow, at the same time that it imposes strict conditions for it to take place: the object must interpose itself between the source of light and the screen .. .” That is, all works of art involve aspects such as point of view, the inclusion of the object depicted in diverse fields of signification, and the position of the artist and viewer with regard to all of the above. Such complexity informs the current group of exhibitions at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, seeking to portray the museum itself through shows whose language is comprised of diverse kinds of reproduction and replication.

The exhibitions on view explore the museal institution from diverse points of view, and elements of the museum’s display system are the objects they portray and question. In doing so, the exhibitions themselves maintain a complex relationship to the museum, which analogously serves both as the object on which light is shed as the artist portrays it, and as the “screen” on which the museum’s image is to be portrayed, feature for feature, trait pour trait. The exhibitions present challenging, charged questions about the ways by which the museum is established as an institution, as well as about that institution’s order and its significance. They examine the means by which the museum’s features are shaped by society, its culture and ethos, as well as the ways by which these are reflected by and within the museum. For the museum’s “white cube” is anything but neutral; it is an interpretative environment that situates the visitor vis-à-vis the work of art by a variety of means. Already in the 1970s, Brian O’Doherty pointed out that the white cube originates in ritual spaces that convey a sense of sublime timelessness, likening it to “a ghetto space, a survival compound, a proto-museum” which attempts to cast over artistic posterity a façade of eternality and the cultural values of a specific class or caste. In fact, he claims, as postmodernism has made increasingly clear, this is not a neutral space at all; rather, it sustains layers of myth, ethos, economy, and history, all of which construct the relationship between viewer and art work.

The current exhibitions offer a self-reflexive gaze at the museum by exploring, as a case study, the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art itself, its nvironment, architecture, and collections, also looking past it at additional spaces of display and commemoration. The exhibitions of Assaf Evron and Dana Yoeli examine the exposed-concrete building of the Herzliya Museum, originally built as a combination between an art museum and a military memorial center. The exhibitions of Yair Barak, Osias Hofstatter, and Tal Slutzker take as their starting point specific past exhibitions presented at the Herzliya Museum (shows by Uri Lifshitz, Zakhar Sherman, and Hofstatter’s permanent exhibition) to imbue their current display with additional layers of significance. Yael Burstein, Noa Gur, and Ofri Cnaani expose the museum’s systemic means of contemplation and power. At the large gallery, Hadas Ophrat reconstructs the experience of visiting Villa Capra designed by Andrea Palladio in Italy, and points to the gap between human shortcomings and the utopian ideal manifested in this villa and in the museum. Guy Goldstein, the first recipient of the Keshet Award for Contemporary Art founded by the Bar-Gil Avidan Family, presents a video-and-sound installation that explores, by converting and re-encoding a musical piece by Richard Wagner, the pertinence to the museum and to art of engagement with taboo and censorship.

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